David McElroy

I keep being reminded that I don’t fit in this place.

That thought is always in the back of my mind. I’ve felt it for most of my life. But there are certain days when it seems as though the reminders are everywhere. After another one of those days Thursday, I am feeling incredibly alone tonight.

Again.

Nothing bad happened to me Thursday. Nobody rejected me or insulted me. I didn’t have an argument with anybody. Instead, I had two perfectly friendly conversations with people I’ve known for years, but I walked away from them feeling strangely depressed and isolated.

The specifics of the conversations don’t matter. In fact, explaining them would probably sidetrack what I have to say onto different issues. Neither person said anything shocking or offensive. They both simply expressed perfectly ordinary assumptions about life and the world around us — assumptions which wouldn’t have seemed noteworthy to most people.

But those two conversations jerked me back to reality. They reminded me that I’m the alien here.

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I haven’t been able to escape all of the dysfunctional programming from my childhood.

It’s not that I haven’t tried. It’s not that I haven’t grown emotionally and done a lot of psychological healing. It’s just that bits and pieces of the dysfunction affect me when I least expect it. I can feel like a normal and healthy adult when something randomly triggers things that I hope I’ve conquered.

“We own you!” the voice seems to hiss. “We tell you what to do. What to think. You’re not good enough. Nobody likes you. Everybody is attacking you. They’re disappointed in you. What’s wrong with you?”

Who is the voice?

It’s hard to say for sure. Whatever it is started with my narcissistic father. He was angry and critical and demanding with me. He taught me to be afraid. He taught me to doubt myself. He taught me to fear that I was being attacked and demeaned and belittled.

And even though he’s been dead for years, some remnant of his voice still lives in my head in a form I can’t quite explain or understand. But whatever it is, I can say one thing clearly.

That voice is a liar.

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I’ve recently discovered color. And sound. And motion. It’s changing everything.

Metaphorically speaking, I’ve been living in a world of black-and-white still images for most of my life. I didn’t realize what I had been missing.

I’m slowly starting to see the world as a full-color, three-dimensional sensory experience with amazing sound — intellectually speaking.

I’ve always thought I was a bright guy. I’ve always considered myself well-read and well-educated. I’ve probably been a little smug about it.

About 10 years ago, I started adding to my intellectual diet. Although I had read a lot of fiction when I was young — mostly science fiction — the bulk of my real reading diet had been very factual and very practical. I’d mostly read about things that seemed pragmatic — business, economics, politics and psychology.

I started reading classic literature and essays. Leo Tolstoy. Hermann Hesse. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Montaigne. Alexandre Dumas. G.K. Chesterton. Even Charles Dickens. The more I read, the more I realized how ignorant I had been.

I suddenly realized that these people made me look like an intellectual pygmy — and the fact that their work had been popular with masses of people in their own days made me realize how far our intellectual standards have fallen.

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